Health Care BS

If you want to know the basics of an MSM smear campaign, Dean Barnett provides a step-by-step description of how it’s done:

I think it’s time to take another brief look at the left’s method of smear dissemination. Yesterday on a blog hosted by the prestigious magazine the Atlantic, a post popped up at 11:49 a.m. with the breathless title, “Here We Go.” The post read in its entirety, “Todd Palin’s former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.” The post linked to the Alaskan court system where you could see the motion if you cared to click through.

Although the author didn’t care to make his innuendo explicit, the insinuation was clear – the National Enquirer had previously reported on what it called “a rumor” that the former business partner in question had had an affair with Sarah Palin. The breathless title and the brevity of the post implied that the smoking gun for the affair laid in the court filings that the former business partner wished to conceal. Naturally, because the purported scoop had the imprimatur of the Atlantic, many other news sources picked it up in rapid order.

Thus, the method of the smear mechanism reveals itself – print a lot of speculative crap, all while maintaining a malign indifference as to whether or not you can prove said speculative crap. Actually nailing down a story before running it? That’s so 20th century, at least in the virtual pages of the Atlantic. Doing actual reporting to confirm life-damaging rumors before circulating them? Such quotidian tasks are obviously beneath an Atlantic blogger’s pay grade.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin juxtaposes the Palin smears with the hagiographic treatment afforded the Obamas. And it’s no good claiming that this is limited to the tabloid media. Barnett’s post makes it obvious that precisely the same thing has been going on in the “respectable” outlets.

There are countless examples of major broadsheets and weekly “news” magazines in which fawning Obama coverage appears side-by-side with hopelessly dishonest coverage of the phony troopergate scandal and other smears. These people have jumped the shark.

The good news: the media bias is so over-the-top this time that it will probably help McCain-Palin win the election.